Fifth-year Feast
Grace
“HUFFLEPUFF!”
The sorting hat hadn’t even been on my head for a second before it shouted out its judgement. Professor Sprout—now my Head of House—smiled brightly, as deputy headmistress McGonaggall took the hat away to ready it for the big sorting in the Great Hall. Not wanting to make a scene of my own arrival into fifth year, Professor Dumbledore had suggested a private sorting with only the heads of houses present.
“Welcome, dear,” Professor Sprout said as she gripped my hand with both of hers. “I’ll introduce you to the prefect in your year before the feast, so she can show you the ropes until you find your feet. You’ll be sharing a dorm with her and three others.”
I nodded. I was still a little light-headed from the side-along apparition to Hogwarts Dumbledore had taken me on, but my feet thankfully never stumbled on the way to the arriving carriages that brought the rest of the student body. Well, the rest apart from the first-years, anyway.
“Hestia! Come here for a moment, please, dear.” Dear seemed to be Professor Sprout’s favourite word for us. “Hestia, this is a new student, Grace, and she’ll be joining your year. She’s just been sorted privately, and she’s a Hufflepuff. Could you show her around until she has her bearings?”
“Of course.” The prefect turned to me. “Hestia Jones, pleasure to meet you.”
“Grace Collins. Likewise.”
Professor Sprout beamed at us and gave me a quick wink before walking into the castle.
“So, are you a transfer? Those are pretty rare, I think.”
“Oh, no, it just took a while for the Hogwarts list to pick me up. I’m muggleborn, and I’d been put in a mental institution for thinking magic existed, so Dumbledore had to find me himself. Don’t know how he did that, but, well, here I am now.”
“Oh.” Hestia looked surprised. I might’ve been too blunt there, I realised, hoping dearly I hadn’t made things too awkward. She recovered quickly, though. “Might want to not divulge too many details to just any random kid from here on. Hogwarts loves its gossip—any spilled secret can spread through the entire school in just a few hours, as long as it’s interesting enough.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said honestly. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” She linked our arms—my turn to be surprised, at her showing physical affection this early into knowing me—and started leading me into the castle. “So, you’re lucky to be in Hufflepuff for two big reasons. First, we generally get along with all of the other Houses, whilst there’s hierarchies to the rivalries the rest have, and second, we throw the best parties. Our common room has tea and biscuits delivered every Saturday morning by the house elves, too, and we have a communal record player where anyone can put on music. Every first Friday night of the month, we open the entrance for year four and above—that’s the one time drinking, smoking and blowing in the common room is fine, otherwise you have to do that in your dorm or at one of the unofficial spots on the grounds. Don’t worry, I’ll show you those soon. Oh, and on the last Sunday of the month we always do a big board game tournament. I think that’s all you need to know about social stuff here. We get our schedules tomorrow morning before class, so I can grab another prefect then to show you around wherever our electives might not match. Questions so far?”
She’d managed to rattle all the way from the grounds to the table. It was kind of impressive. I shrugged a little, and we sat down at the far end of the table, next to each other.
“Alright. The Sorting’s about to begin, anyway, and then we get to eat dinner—you look like you could use the Welcome Feast.”
“Oh, wait, I do have one question,” I realised. “I’ll need you to show me to the hospital wing tomorrow morning on the way to breakfast. I have to pick up my pills—Poppy, your matron, she said I have to slowly get used to not taking my medication, so I have to work down the dose one prescription at a time. I have to pick them up every morning, since it’s illegal to give me more than one dose at a time until I turn 16, in November.”
“Oh, no worries. That’ll only be a few minutes extra.” She flashed me a grin, seemingly not at all phased by anything medical I could say. I couldn’t help but give a small smile back.
*****
Sirius
“Oi, do we know who that is?” I pointed at the Hufflepuff table as we sat down at the Gryffindor table.
James found who I was looking at and shrugged. “Never seen her before. Think she’s new?”
“She can’t be a firstie, she’s definitely too old,” I said.
“And she wouldn’t be in the Hall yet if she was,” Remus added. “A transfer?”
“Don’t know. Also, she’s already been sorted, by the looks of it. Didn’t they sort transfers along with the firsties in the past?” James asked.
Remus shrugged. “There’s only a dozen or so cases to go on there, spread over—what? A thousand years?”
“Something like that,” Peter mumbled. “So if we don’t know her, and she’s not a transfer, who or what is she?”
My turn to shrug. “Well, at least we have Hogwarts’ obsession with gossip. By lunch tomorrow, I bet you half the school knows what’s going on.”
“The rest will know by dinner,” James commented, losing interest in favour of glancing at Lily Evans every few seconds.
“Hmm.”
“Do you think they’ll have that chocolate cake again this year?” Peter asked. The girl was quickly forgotten in favour of discussing pudding, and then betting on the Sortings when the firsties entered.